Various tape preparations that are applied onto the surface of a human body for the purpose of anti-inflammation, pain relief, pruritus, shaking off drowsiness, refreshment, and the like have been previously launched.
These tape preparations are applied onto a wide variety of sites depending on their purposes. The tape preparations are often applied onto bendable parts such as an elbow joint or a knee joint, or curved parts such as a face, a neck, or a shoulder.
A conventional tape preparation is, as is shown in FIG. 7, a tape preparation 10 that includes a backing 11 on which a drug-containing adhesive layer (ointment layer) 12 is laminated and a release film 13 that covers the drug-containing adhesive layer (ointment layer) 12.
When the conventional tape preparation is applied in practice, the release film 13 is peeled off and the ointment layer is applied together with the backing. To enhance conformability at an application site, elastic materials such as a polyvinyl chloride film or a polyester film, a knit or a textile, or a nonwoven fabric are used as the backing on which the ointment layer is laminated.
The thickness of the backing of this tape preparation is thin in order to ensure conformability. The thickness is about 100 to 200 μm in the case of a film and about 700 to 1200 μm in the case of a nonwoven fabric or a knit.
Furthermore, the backing used for the tape preparation is very flexible. Therefore, people frequently fail in applying the tape preparation, since the tape preparation becomes difficult to handle at the stage when people peel off the release sheet and try to apply the tape preparation.
For this reason, conformability at an application site has been searched for while ensuring a certain amount of hardness of the backing. However, the tape preparation is not conformable to the complicated movement of skin and often causes an uncomfortable feeling at the time of application.
Another problem that has also been seen is that creases due to shrinking occur, which is unique to a tape preparation, and the applied tape preparation tends to peel off easily at its ends.
Furthermore, when a polyvinyl chloride film, a polyester film, and the like are used as the backing, their sealing performance causes sweating and consequently the tape preparation may peel off.
Therefore, development of a tape preparation that solves these problems has been under study in various ways (Patent Documents 1 to 4).
These studies mainly focus on a drug-containing adhesive layer. These problems are avoided, for example, by designing a highly adhesive preparation, but are not completely solved. Conversely, adverse effects such as damaged keratin and internal hemorrhage have been seen when the tape preparation is peeled off from an affected area.